A Calgary woman is sharing her experience after a trip out for snacks with her family ended with frightening verbal abuse.

Lubna Akl went to Peters' Drive-In, an iconic Calgary fast food joint, on Wednesday evening with her three young children. She was wearing a hijab.

While she waited in line in her car to order, she heard blaring music. It was so loud she couldn't place her order over the speaker.

Confronted by a stranger

When she looked toward the source of the noise, she saw a woman waving both middle fingers at her.

The woman was singing "go back to your f**king country you f**king c*nt," Akl wrote in a Facebook post about the incident.

Akl thought she might try to make the woman stop by pretending to take her photo with her phone, but it only aggravated her further.

"I put my phone up like I was snapping pictures only for her to rush out of her truck like a maniac, run to my car, again putting both middle fingers against my passenger window ... keeping in mind my six-year-old, three-year-old and two-year-old are in the back seat."

It's unfortunate, and it's unfair."

She got out of her car to confront the woman, who got nose-to-nose with her and told her to take off her "jabib" (hijab) and "go back to [her] country."

Akl called police, who declined to lay any charges against the woman as there were no threats of violence, the Calgary Herald reported.

Nobody stepped in to help

She said the most frustrating part of the entire ordeal was that nobody stepped in to intervene.

"It's unfortunate, and it's unfair. We teach our children on a daily basis to stand up for themselves and stand up to bullying. Yet we can't even lead by example," Akl wrote, adding that people instead gathered around to document the incident on their phones.

Rehtaeh Parsons, 17, died by suicide last week after she was allegedly raped when she was 15. The boys took a photo of her and then spread the photo to students at her school. Months of bullying followed. Police investigated the case but never pressed charges.

B.C. teen Amanda Todd took her life in 2012 after months of online bullying over an explicit photo of her was sent to students at her school.
Todd posted a moving YouTube clip chronicling the bullying she faced. Her death sparked greater awareness of bullying in B.C. and across Canada.

Mitchell Wilson, 11, was bullied and mugged because of his muscular dystrophy, a condition that made it hard for Mitchell to walk and perform physical activity. The Pickering, Ont. boy continued to be tormented and died by suicide in the fall of 2011, shortly before he was to testify at the trial of the boy who allegedly attacked him. (The boy was acquitted).

Jamie Hubley, 15, was the son of an Ottawa city councillor who had been suffering from depression but was also being bullied for being gay. He took his life in 2011. Jamie was a talented figure skater and musician, his father said.

Comedian Rick Mercer dedicated one of his 'rants' to Hubley's suicide.
"He was gay alright. He was a great big goofy gay kid singing Lady Gaga on the Internet. And as an adult, you look at that and you go, you know what? That kid's going places. But for some reason, some kids, they looked at that and they attacked and now he's gone," he said.

An aspiring musician, 15-year-old Jenna Bowers-Bryanton took her life in January, 2011, after clips of her performances were criticized by bullies at school and online.
"They told her she had no talent, that she was ugly, that she may as well go kill herself," Marsha Milner, a family friend told the CBC. "The things that were said to her and the way she was bullied pushed her over the brink."

Vancouver poet Shane Koyczan and animators from around this world created this beautiful tribute to those who have been bullied. We've also provided links to a number of anti-bullying resources below:
Kid's Help Phone
Stop A Bully.Ca
Bullying Canada
PinkShirtDay.ca